


Math Makes Sense

by ThanksForListening



Series: Shazam! One Shots [1]
Category: Shazam! (2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Shazamily - Freeform, i am ready to lay my life down for this entire family btw, mostly just billy and mary but the others are mentioned and talked about, past angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 10:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20095456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: “Hey Mary?” He asked after a minute.“Yeah?”“Why are we doing this?”“Doing what?”“Sleeping in the family room.”or, Billy realizes he doesn't know as much about his new family as he thinks he does.





	Math Makes Sense

**Author's Note:**

> so i haven't read a single comic book so if these characters all have backstories that are canon i don't know them. also i don't know if there's anything in here that needs a trigger warning because i don't really describe anything graphically but it does mention abuse and stuff so pls be careful.

Billy couldn’t sleep. Not that that was a rare occurrence, but the culprit was usually nightmares, not Victor’s snoring.

He looked across the room at his foster father. The whole family was asleep in the family room, scattered on sleeping bags underneath a makeshift blanket fort. Thunder boomed outside, accompanied by the patter of rain on the windows. As soon as the first crack of lightning struck, the rest of the family had started grabbing supplies, setting up their station on the floor. Billy had no idea why, but he’d learned at this point that his new family had a ton of unusual traditions, and going with the flow was easier than asking questions. 

Sitting up slightly, he looked around to see if he could maneuver his way to the kitchen. He’d gotten stuck against the couch in the back, sandwiched between Freddy and Pedro. Eugene and Mary slept in front of him, with Darla passed out in Mary’s lap. Across from them, Victor and Rosa laid in each other’s arms. He sighed. 

“You get used to it,” a soft voice said, and he turned to see Mary looking at him. 

“Used to what?”

“Getting trapped. Next time you’ll think ahead,” she said, and lifted up a bottle of water. She passed it over to him, and he leaned forward to reach it. 

“Thanks,” He said, taking a sip before handing it back to her. 

“So why are you awake?” 

He shrugged. “Guess I’m not used to sleeping so close to this many people.”

“Really?”

“....yeah,” he said, “pretty sure most families don’t have slumber parties.”

“But we don’t come from most families.” She looked at him as if that was obvious, which he guessed it was. “You were never in a home where you had to share a room with a bunch of people?”

“I didn’t really stick around most places long enough to get used to it,” he responded. 

Mary nodded. “I had the opposite problem when I first got here,” she said. “I’d never had a room to myself before. I loved it at first, but at night the quiet freaked me out.”

“I get that,” he said, and he wasn’t usually one for sharing the details about his foster kid sob story, but for some reason he didn’t keep his mouth shut. “It was the dark for me. On the streets, if you can’t see, you can’t protect yourself. Doesn’t matter where I am now — if I can’t see myself, can’t see the room I’m in, I can't sleep. It’s why I like keeping the blinds open.”

“Do you think we’ll ever get over it?” She asked, staring at the wall in front of her instead of at him. “I know we’re not normal kids, but will we get to be normal adults?”

“I don’t know. Victor and Rosa turned out okay. Definitely not normal,” he said with a smile, “but okay.”

Mary smiled back at him, but she still looked sad. He couldn’t figure out why, couldn’t figure out what he’d said wrong. It was moments like this that he wished he was more like Freddy. Freddy always knew how to cheer someone up. Billy wasn’t so good at making others happy. 

“Hey Mary?” He asked after a minute.

“Yeah?”

“Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Sleeping in the family room.”

“Oh.” She looked down. “When Darla first got here a few years ago, thunderstorms freaked her out. Victor and Rosa thought this might make it better. I guess it just kind of stuck.”

“Did you live here already?” He asked, realizing he had no idea how long any of them had been staying in his new house. They never really talked about their previous experiences — plus, with everything that had happened in the past few months, the last thing on his mind was what life had been like before he’d gotten here.

“Yeah,” she answered, turning back toward him. “I was their first — got here when I was a little younger than you. Darla showed up about a year after that. Then Pedro, Freddy, Eugene. Then you.”

“Were they as bad as I was?” He said, and she smiled slightly. 

“You weren’t bad.”

“Pretty sure dragging your family into a battle with a super villain qualifies as bad.”

“Trust me, I’ve dealt with a lot worse than you, Billy Batson.” She said it with a smile, but Billy could hear the weight in the words. 

“I’m sorry,” he said without meaning to.

“For what?”

“For whatever worse thing you’ve dealt with.”

“It’s fine,” she said, in the quick way that meant it definitely wasn’t. “The past doesn’t matter anymore. I’m looking to the future now.”

“Like CalTech,” He said, and she did that thing again, smiled while looking sad. “Are you nervous?”

“Of course I’m nervous,” she said. “I shouldn’t be, but I am.”

“Why shouldn’t you be? Isn’t college, like, scary for everyone?”

“I’m not everyone, though.” She answered. “After everything, college shouldn’t be what terrifies me. I should be braver than this.”

“You’re the bravest person I know.” As he said it, he realized it was true. They all might have gotten superpowers, but it was Mary who’d thrown her powerless self in front of everyone at the carnival. 

She just looked at him, but he couldn’t read the expression on her face. It was like ten emotions mixed into one, all twisted and broken and impossible to decipher.

“What was everyone else like?” He said, trying to change the subject. “When they first got here, I mean.”

“Freddy hasn’t changed since the day he walked through those doors,” she said, and she wasn’t smiling but he could hear it in her voice, and he counted that as a win. “Even with all the shit he’s gone through, he never once let it stop him from being himself. He brought a light into this house when I thought it had already gotten as bright as it could get.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” he laughed. Mary did too, but it stopped quickly, disappearing into the quiet space around them. 

“The others took a lot more time to get to where they are now. When they brought Pedro home, he wouldn’t speak to anyone. Didn’t even acknowledge that we were there. Not for weeks. All he did was go to school and sleep. Twelve years old, and he’d already given up on everything.”

“What changed?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. One day Rosa swore in Spanish and he just burst out laughing. We hadn’t even seen him smile before that. Afterwards, it was like he’d flipped a mental switch. He started relaxing around her more. Then around the rest of us.”

“What about Eugene?”

“When he first came, he was afraid of everything. He refused to touch a single thing in the house. Said he didn’t want to break anything. He would sit all day like a statue, like if he didn’t move we wouldn’t notice him. It wasn’t until Victor showed him how to take apart and rebuild computers that he seemed to realize no one would punish him for being a kid in this house.”

“Wow,” Billy said, and he looked around at his siblings sleeping next to him. It was easy to forget that they’d all come from different places, that each one of them had a story that led them here, to a last resort safe haven. That, just like him, it took a lot of pain to get there. 

“Darla,” Mary continued, and Billy watched as she looked down at her, running her hand through her hair. “Darla wouldn’t stop crying.”

“What happened to her before?” He asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. 

“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked slightly, and he pretended like he couldn’t hear it. “But I pray she never remembers a time before this house. She came when she was around five, and she wouldn’t let anyone touch her. We could barely get within five feet of her before she burst into tears. I think—“ she swallowed, “I think they hurt her. Whoever had her before us. I don’t know if they were her birth parents, or other foster parents, or someone else, but it was bad. Real bad.”

“Shit,” he said, more to himself than to her. 

“I was the first one,” she said, eyes still glued on the girl in her lap. “I got up one morning and heard her crying in her sleep. When I woke her up, she threw herself into my arms. I don’t know what made her decide to trust me, but she did. She fell asleep laying against me.”

“Holding her,” she kept going, and Billy wondered if she even saw him anymore, saw any of them but Darla, “she was the first person I ever felt like I’d do anything for. I’d die for her. I’d move mountains for her. And when Sivana told those _things_ to kill her, I—“ she took a breath, shaky and loud and full of unshed tears, “my heart stopped. I would have given anything in the world to take her place. To let it be me instead. I would have begged to die if it meant she’d live.”

“She’s lucky,” he said, and she looked up at him, as if she’d forgotten he was there, “to have a big sister like you. We all are.”

“Yeah,” She said, “so lucky to have a sister who’s going to abandon her by going to the other side of the country.”

“You’re not abandoning her.”

“That’s not how she sees it,” she whispered. “Not how I see it.”

“She’ll understand.”

“She’ll hate me.”

“No, she’ll miss you. There’s a difference.”

“What if I come back and she doesn’t want me anymore?” She asked, and Billy had never heard her sound so young. Her voice reminded him that she was still a kid, too, despite how mature she might seem. “What if none of them do?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that, because we’re your family. And you guys taught me that you don’t abandon family.”

“Just getting there is expensive,” she said, “let alone the price of tuition. Even with scholarships and loans, it’s a lot of money, more than I deserve. What if I go and they decide I’m not worth it?”

“Mary, that’s ridiculous.”

“It could happen.”

“It _won’t._”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do, Mary—“

“No you don’t!” She said, and her voice only rose to a normal volume, but compared to the hushed tone they’d been using so far, it felt like shouting. They both froze, staring at the faces around them. No one stirred. “I know,” she said after a minute, voice back down to a whisper, “that they say I’ll always have a home here. I know that, and I believe that, but I’ve heard that before. Believed that before.”

“This is different. It’s Victor and Rosa— they would never abandon you.”

“People are unpredictable, Billy,” she said. “They say things they think they mean, and then they change their minds. They want you until you become too much of a hassle, too hard to deal with. Then they throw you away, as if you never meant anything to them at all.”

He wanted to argue, to tell her it wasn’t true, but the words died on the tip of his tongue. She was right. They all knew, more than anyone, that sometimes the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, just...don’t. 

“Before I came here,” she said, “I thought I’d found my spot. My home. The parents were nice. They had a son my age, but they told me they’d always wanted a daughter. We got to share a room, sleep in bunk beds without another three kids sleeping on the floor. They had a huge extended family, too. The house was always full with aunts and uncles and cousins. I felt safe with them, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I spent a year in that house. Even called them Mom and Dad.”

“What happened?”

Mary shrugged, and he could see tears starting to stream down her face. “Their son and I, we kinda had a thing. I mean, we were thirteen, so it wasn’t anything more than staring at each other and holding hands when no one was looking, but still. One day they caught us kissing. They lost their shit. It was like they became completely different people. Called me a whore. Told me they couldn’t believe I would try and take advantage of their son, of their hospitality. See,” she said, “they told me they thought of me as a daughter, but I guess I was always just a charity case to them.”

“Mary, I am so sorry.”

“You wanna know the worst part?” She said, and he almost said no, that he didn’t want to hear about what awful things had happened to his sister, but he knew she wasn’t really asking. “It took another month before my case worker could get me out of there. I spent weeks having to live in that house, in that town. It was hell. They had connections to just about everyone, and they had no qualms toward spreading the news about the deranged foster kid they’d let into their home. I’d come to school and find the word ‘slut’ written on my locker; I’d come home and they’d say it to my face. One day, a group of all those cousins tracked me down on the way home from school. Beat the crap out of me in broad daylight.” She took a breath. “I stopped coming home after that, not until I had to.”

“Where did you go?”

“The library,” she said. “It was free, and the people were nice, and it let me disappear for hours at a time. It also gave me something to do— I read more in that month than I ever have to this day.”

“Wow.” Billy knew he needed to say more, do more, but he couldn’t. He felt too much all at once — rage at her old foster family, sadness over what she went through, pride at who she became — and he didn’t know how to deal with it, how to sort the emotions into their proper places. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You always listen to us. We can listen to you, too.”

“God, I’m gonna scare the crap out of my new roommate, aren’t I. ‘Hey, I’m Mary, I’ve got a fucked up past and super powers, nice to meet you.’” She laughed, before she realized what she said. She gasped. “Don’t tell Victor and Rosa that I said the f word in front of you.”

Billy just laughed. “You think the rest of us don’t say it?” She gave him a look, and he corrected himself. “You think everyone but Darla doesn’t say it?”

She laughed, and he silently vowed to make sure she never cried again, not if he could help it. 

“Hey,” He said after a minute, “speaking of college — why are you majoring in math? Math sucks.”

“Math doesn't _suck._ Math is fun.”

“How on Earth is math _fun_?”

“Because there’s always a right answer,” she said. “It’s a bunch of puzzles with rules that you have to follow, and it’ll always lead you to one final result. Plus, it rarely changes -- the math we know now is the math that existed years and years ago. The world is complicated and confusing, but math makes sense.”

“Forget the superhero stuff — that’s the thing that’ll make you look crazy to your roommate,” he said, and he sighed in relief when she laughed again. 

“Okay,” She said, “we need to go to sleep. I can’t keep you up any later.”

He laid back down, shifting in his sleeping bag until he found a comfortable position. For a few minutes he stayed there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to sort the thoughts running wild in his brain. “Hey, Mary?” He whispered after a while.

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t deserve all of that. They were wrong to treat you that way, to hurt you, and when you become crazy successful, it’ll be in spite of them, not because of them.” He shrugged, even though she probably couldn’t see it. “I wasn’t sure if anyone had said that to you before, but I thought you should hear it.”

She was quiet for so long that he thought she’d fallen back asleep. He turned on his side, ready to try and go to sleep himself, when he heard her whisper: “Thanks, Billy.”

He smiled as he closed his eyes. It didn’t matter that the tragedy found in the history of everyone around him was more than most suffered in a lifetime — they were his family, and they’d be okay one day. They had to be.

**Author's Note:**

> im hoping to write more moments with the shazamily but i don't have anything concrete planned just yet. also i love comments and kudos more than life itself. also hit me up on tumblr if u want @thanks--for--listening.


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